Page 13 of The Mafia's Bride
Zio Nico hired them. Their loyalty might be to my family by way of debt—blood or monetary—but they are of little consequence to me.
“Don’t let anything drip between the boards,” I direct, watching them nod quietly.
I can’t have congealed blood in the grooves of my office. It reminds me too much of my accident.
The scents of old blood and charred flesh momentarily assault my nose, and I have to force it away, wincing as if I can physically ignore it.Not now.The memories do no good to dwell on them now.
I tug up the leather gloves as they hide mangled flesh of my hands. The stiff gloves aren’t practical to shoot a gun, but I’ve learned to adapt. They provide support to my aching hands, and they hide the scars from those who might think they’re a weakness.
I pull the collar of my suit jacket higher and tug the cuffs down just as a cane thumps against the floor behind me. Standing tall, I look every bit the picture of a perfect soon-to-be Capo as Zio Nico steps up beside me.
“Get anything?”
“Enough,” I say, bracing my weight evenly between legs as I wait for Nico’s aged body to move closer.
Always the perfect heir, just like Zio instructed me years ago. The men give my mentor a brief nod, one of respect, before returning to their task.
The body rolls soundly into the bag and the cleaning products are dumped all around without finesse. The harsh smell of disinfectanthits me and I clench my jaw, the bad memories resurfacing momentarily as I battle them away.
I hate thatfuckingsmell. It’s the smell of a hospital, of excruciating pain and terrible sorrow. It’s the smell I woke up to, a young boy who discovered his entire family was killed while he lived, and I would be leaving my home to go to a new country with distant relatives.
That smell reminds me of how alone I felt.
None of that shows on my face, though. Not in front of these men and certainly not in front of my uncle. Appearances are everything in this life. One slip of weakness and I’m likely to die.
Nico sighs, tutting over the mess. A man is into his late sixties, his black hair is streaked with grey but there’s a quiet strength to his small statue. His warm tanned skin crinkles with age and he leans heavily on his cane, his knees crippled from arthritis.
A man battling lung cancer, he looks like a gentleman from a bygone era but that’s where the similarities stop. Nico is as ruthless as they come, even now as his body withers, he’s calculating and cruel.
This is the man who ran the family in Boston against all kinds of enemies for decades. Other rivals, family disputes, investigating cops, he somehow kept it going, kept the family alive, kept his seat of power when others crumbled.
I’m grateful for his rescue, his tutelage, for his guidance. Without him, I’d be on the street, an orphan. With him, I have a family, a home, a purpose.
When he handed me this family, I took it willingly. Because that’s what you do for family.
He puffs on the cigarette in his pincer grasp as I tsk lightly. “Zio, Zia Maria is going to be pissed if she sees you doing that.” Not to mention the cancer eroding his lungs into nothing more than mesh.
It’s why now, after years of leadership, Zio is moving up the timetable on his replacement. Most men in the family don’t get a retirement; they die in this life or see prison.
Not Nico, though. He’s going out on his schedule, training me to take over and leave the family with a line of succession.
Including interrogating suspected rats who talked to the Feds about our last shipment. We’ve been missing cases for weeks, which was quietly being investigated, but when our warehouse was raided last week, we knew we had a huge problem. Someone was selling our secrets.
It was up to me to figure out who. It was my chance to show Nico I could handle the family, that I would be a competent replacement.
Unfortunately, a week later, we still don’t know who the leak is.
On top of the signing that fucking marriage contract, which has more clauses than the Bible, we’re responsible for O’Brien’s goods when they come in. If we can’t handle our own stockpile, how can we be expected to handle Ace’s?
Given the rumors about her psychotic brand of retribution, I don’t need to give her any excuse to come after me.
I still don’t understand why Nico agreed to the contract. We don’t need Ace and her family’s ragtag clan. We’re just as rich, just as well connected and frankly, better.
He’s tight-lipped about why.
“Dump him behind the landfill,” Nico instructs, throwing the cigarette on to the floor. His heel crushes the smoking butt, and I frown. “And don’t tell Maria. She’s already on me enough.”
The cane makes a thwacking noise every time he moves, crossing the expansive room to the wide windows that face the floor below. They’re blacked out to see out but not in, and therefore, no one can see a dead body being carried out.
